Ripe As Peaches
by OmniHelix
Summary: His California dreams and life with Rachel in ruins, Finn is making his way back to Lima from Los Angeles when he encounters his and Rachel's soul mates, high atop a mesa in the Utah desert.


**A/N: I own neither Glee nor its characters. The song is "Beat the Retreat", by Richard Thompson. Reviews welcome! Somewhat AU now, with the 3X16 episode. **

The drive from Los Angeles became a long, quiet, personal meditation. This time, Finn Hudson's iPod remained silent. Before, his well-stocked iPod had served as the soundtrack to his journey, his life. When he set out for California with Puck after graduation, he listened to it constantly: all along I-70 through Illinois and Missouri, over the Rockies in Colorado, across the Utah desert, then into Nevada and, finally, Los Angeles on I-15. It was the soundtrack to his dream of making his mother proud; the funeral music to his dream of a life with Rachel. But now, with both dreams in ruins, the thought of listening to music as he beat his retreat back to Lima only depressed him.

Finn left LA in his truck in the late afternoon. Puck stood in the street and waved, sorry about how the competition, their naiveté, and chronic undercapitalization had driven their little business under. He had already taken a job with another company, but Finn had experienced enough humiliation, and decided to go back to Lima. His mother and Burt said he could have his old job back, and stay with them until he found a place. The sun was setting as he left the basin, crossing Tejon Pass on I-15, with a plan to eat, and maybe sleep, in Vegas.

The night it all ended with Rachel still haunted him. They had gone to the lake, Finn half expecting her to fight him tooth and nail over his California plan. Instead, Rachel, still reeling from the way he dropped those plans on her only a couple of days before, was despondent, but resigned.

"I've been thinking about what you told me," she said, holding her hands tightly in her lap as they sat in his truck. "And you are right, to a certain extent. I love you for what I know in my heart you are. The tragedy is, you simply cannot let yourself see what it is that I see. Which makes me a fool. I offered to help you find your dreams, to come up with them together; instead, you listened to somebody else, came up with a plan on your own, dropped it on me outside of my locker, then had the gall to tell me the whole conversation had been one-sided." She was saying all of this quietly, tightly controlled. It terrified him. He couldn't reply, only listen..

"I love you. And I know you. And I know what you are capable of and what you love doing, and cleaning pools in California isn't it. But you're convinced that it is, so you must go. I just can't go with you, not when I know in the very marrow of my bones that it will make neither of us happy. Nor can I insist you come with me to New York, because all that will do is breed resentment. I'm not sure I can make it there without you…but I'll just have to." She looked down at her hands. "And now I'm going to make the most adult decision of my life, even though it feels like my heart is being ripped from my chest." She slipped the engagement ring slowly off her finger, looked at it lovingly, sadly, for a moment, and proffered it to him. "I'm sorry, Finn, but I cannot marry you."

The Vegas-bound traffic was light, leaving him plenty of time to his thoughts. Finn played that night over and over in his head, just like he had for the past year and a half, only in these reenactments he did what he should have done. But he couldn't change what actually happened. He told her to keep the ring, and drove her home in silence. Then made plans for California anyway. Neither of them went to the Prom. They lost Nationals. Rachel focused on getting into NYADA, was accepted, and each of them left for their respective coasts. Kurt told him she had regressed in that she had very few friends, but managed to excel and win a freshman award for singing. Finn felt a twinge of shame when he, almost without thinking, felt a surge of pride for her.

Before he knew it, Finn was descending into the Ivanpah valley, approaching the Nevada border. Below him, I-15 stretched into the darkness. Las Vegas was not yet in sight, but the Nevada state line could be clearly seen in the distance, etched into the valley floor by the beckoning lights of the casinos at Primm, pressed against the boundary like liquor stores crowding the border of a dry county. He poured himself some coffee from a thermos and pushed on.

In Las Vegas Finn stopped for gas and ate at a small diner. The waitress was pretty but bored, the food tasteless, and soon he was back on the road, unable to sleep. In the darkness, alone, it was difficult not to think of Rachel. Difficult not thinking of sleeping with her: impossible now, after what he had done. He felt cursed. In Los Angeles it had been somewhat easier. Girls were plentiful, and with his looks he was pretty much guaranteed company. He even took a few of them up on it to ease the loneliness. But even the most jaded of them recognized just how haunted he was. Even Puck began to worry about him, especially when everything started to go south.

One day he found a card in his mail, with a New York return address. Inside the pink, blank card was a pressed flower: a forget-me-not. He cried himself to sleep after throwing it away, ashamed that it was her reaching out to him, ashamed he could not bring himself to reply, and, most of all, ashamed his pride prevented him from being the man she always knew, from the very beginning, he could be. The man he should be.

Eventually, weariness and the ghosts forced him to pull over at dawn, at a picnic site in the Virgin River Gorge, just inside the Arizona border. He tried sleeping in his truck. But the heat eventually woke him up after half an hour, so he pushed on north, into Utah, finally giving up a couple of hours later in a motel in Cedar City, nestled at the green feet of the Wasatch mountains. The clerk, a kindly, middle-aged woman, was watching "Funny Girl" on the little TV. He must have looked like hell, because she fussed over him and gave him the quietest room she could.

There, in the motel, he finally seemed to catch a break. For the first time in months, Finn got more than a good night's sleep—he slept through the day and the whole night, waking up around 4AM. He vaguely remembered dreaming about Rachel, but it wasn't the usual breakup one that ruined his sleep before. This time, she was simply sitting at a picnic table, somewhere, laughing. He took a leisurely shower and had a huge breakfast before setting out again.

Soon he was heading east, into the Utah desert on I-70. In Crescent Junction he stopped for lunch, and a brochure in a rack in the diner caught his eye as he walked in. It was the National Park Service pamphlet for Canyonlands National Park. On the cover was this fantastic panoramic shot of mesas and canyons, leading down to a glimpse of a river, far below.

"Pretty nice, huh?" A tall rangy man in a black cowboy hat next to him at the counter had noticed what Finn was reading. He had a bushy moustache and a deep voice.

"Yeah, its…amazing," Finn replied, "Like some giant had scooped out the earth with his hands."

"Well, if you've got the time, you can camp right there. Island in the Sky has a nice, primitive campground, near the overview where that shot was taken, and it's only a couple of hours south of here", the man drawled. "You have to bring in your own water, though, and it only has thirteen spots, but it probably won't be occupied this time of year."

Perfect, thought Finn. It's not like I have to be home right away... He bought gas, ice and some snacks and headed south.

Several hours later, he was taking a winding, switchback road up the side of a tall, brooding mesa. He checked in with the ranger station, paid the 10 buck fee, drove a few miles through flat grassland, and eventually found himself at the end of a gravel road with some camping sites. Only one spot was taken-by a couple who looked in their fifties- and, even though he really didn't want company, something told him to choose a site near them. It had a fire grate and a picnic table, and he could see a pit toilet nearby. He pitched his tent and crashed inside for a little nap, without speaking to them.

It was still light when he awoke, hungry. He heard the couple speaking in low tones, and when he emerged, he could see the man cooking something with a Coleman stove. The woman sat at the picnic table, drinking a beer and laughing at something the man said. He waved weakly back at them, and sat at his table, assembling a spam sandwich and grabbing his own brew from a cooler.

"Oh my God!" He snapped out of his thoughts. The woman had come over. She was small, not as small as Rachel, maybe five-foot-five, slender, dressed in an old gray UC Santa Cruz sweatshirt, jeans shorts and hiking boots. Finn was startled to realize she looked like he imagined Rachel would at that age: fine lines around deep brown eyes, olive complexion, dark, wavy, shoulder-length hair. The only different feature was her nose, more Roman than Semitic, obviously once broken in the past. She looked at him in mock horror, then turned towards her companion. "Davide (she pronounced it dah-vee-day)! He's eating spam, for crissakes!"

"So? I like spam," Davide said. He was taller, maybe six feet, wiry, with gold rim glasses, longish silver hair and a closely-cropped beard. Professorial. Bright blue eyes. He wore a white Grateful Dead t-shirt, cargo shorts and boots.

"Sorry to scare you," she said, holding out her hand, "I'm Giulia DeMarco, and that's—" she jerked her thumb backwards"-Dave Welland." Her voice was dark and slightly nasal.

"I thought his name was Davide," Finn said, grinning. He stood up and shook her hand. "I'm Finn Hudson".

"Davide is the Italian pronunciation," Giulia said, gazing back at him fondly, "I called him that the day we met."

"When was that?"

"Nineteen-seventy-one. We were sixteen."

Finn felt a tug inside, but not an unpleasant one. He had often imagined him and Rachel at Giulia and Dave's age, telling people they had loved each other that long. "You've been together since you were sixteen? That's…amazing!"

Dave laughed from the Coleman stove. "Actually, we've loved each other since we were sixteen, but we kinda took a thirty-year break."

Finn saw a shadow pass, fleetingly, over Giulia's face. Then she smiled and nodded. "We can talk about that later," she said quickly, "The reason I'm here is to invite you over for a meal, especially now that I know what you were settling for. I'm morally obligated to prevent you from eating that."

"Sure", Finn said, but insisted on finishing the sandwich, much to Giulia's disgust. "What's on the menu?" He prayed it wasn't vegan. That would be too weird.

"Nothing fancy, just Davide's grilled ham, cheese and tomato sandwiches. You like grilled cheese? "

"One of my favorites," Finn replied, laughing to himself. If they only knew….

The three of them sat down with the sandwiches, chips, and beers. They were drinking some English beer called Old Speckled Hen, which came in these cool pint cans. He liked it much better than his Natty Light. The cheese was something called Edam, according to Giulia. It had a smoky, mellow taste that he wasn't used to, but was delicious. He learned a bit more about them.

Both were novelists, living in the Los Angeles area, Manhattan Beach. Dave wrote science fiction; Giulia called her work "mainstream". They met in high school, and the relationship lasted nine years before breaking up (they didn't say why). Each married someone else, and had children: Giulia, a son; Dave, two daughters. Her marriage in Western Australia lasted only ten years, while Dave was happily married to Nell in LA for twenty-eight, until her death in a car accident two years ago. They didn't explain how they were together now. Instead, they asked about him.

Finn told them his story. As he described his breakup with Rachel, he noticed Giulia fighting back sympathetic tears. Dave nodded sadly. It was comforting to finally be able to talk about this with someone who actually seemed to understand.

The air was getting rapidly cooler, and while he helped Giulia put away the dinner things, Dave went to their tent to get something warmer to wear. Finn saw her pause to watch him walk away, then smile with embarrassment when she realized he had noticed.

"I'm never leaving him again," she said, simply, almost to herself.

"You left him back then?" Finn was surprised; he had gotten the wrong impression before.

She nodded. "I was having trouble getting published, and he was having early success. Do you know he won a Nebula award with his first story? It started to eat away at me. Then I listened to someone who told me that his influence was 'obscuring my voice'". A pause, with a lost, faraway look. "I panicked…and with one, reckless, disastrous stroke, ruined everything."

Her raw honesty stunned him. He wanted to ask her more, how they finally reconciled, but Dave emerged from the tent wearing a blue Berkeley sweatshirt, holding a newly-rolled joint.

Giulia's mood brightened, and she took Dave's arm. "Would you care to indulge?" she asked politely, but with a sly grin.

"Sure," said Finn, delighted.

"Great!" Dave said, 'But first, we need a fire. We bought some nice cedar wood down in Moab this morning, since wood gathering is forbidden up here." Finn saw him wink at Giulia, who left them to go get more beer from their battered, classic Land Rover.

He expertly prepared the kindling, then Finn handed him pieces of cedar stacked by the grate, as he assembled a perfect cone. Giulia had lawn chairs set around the grate. There were pint cans of Old Speckled Hen in the cooler. Dave struck a wooden match and carefully lit the kindling, watching intently as it grew and the fire took shape. "Bueno," he pronounced, satisfied, then whipped out the joint, sparking it up with an old silver lighter. He handed it to Finn.

"Thanks," Finn said, taking a deep drag. He handed it back and watched Dave give Giulia a warm kiss before handing the joint to her.

"I hope mild, occasional PDA doesn't gross you out," he said with a wink.

"No, go right ahead, "Finn said, laughing easily. "After all you've been through, you deserve it."

"I like this kid, Giulia; he shows proper respect for his elders."

It was now dark, and after a few more hits Finn began to seriously appreciate the ambience the couple had set. The malty, delicious beer offset the harshness of the smoke, and the scent of the cedar fire, coupled with its soft light and warmth, enabled Finn to relax more than he had in months. He watched the two of them, sitting together, happy, and thought of the choir room back at McKinley, when he and Rachel used to enjoy doing exactly that. Then he noticed something.

"You guys went to different colleges, right?" They nodded. "Didn't that put a strain on the relationship? People used to tell Rachel and me that would happen with us all of the time."

"Well, we were lucky," Giulia said. "Santa Cruz isn't that far from Berkeley, and Dave had this old car. When he had enough gas money—which wasn't often, he was truly broke—he'd drive down some weekends. My roommate Anna was cool with us having the room."

"That's because you had this habit of not sleeping and playing 'Stormy Weather' over and over when you missed me," Dave interjected, laughing. He looked at Finn. "Four weeks into our freshman year Anna called me and said I had to get my ass down to Santa Cruz, because if she heard Etta James sing that damned song one more time she was coming to Berkeley to kill me so Giulia could move on." Giulia rolled her eyes as Finn chuckled.

"Fortunately," she continued, "there were kids who went home to San Francisco every other weekend, and I ended up riding with them and taking BART across the Bay into Berkeley. Dave's roommate Ben often went home to Sacramento on weekends, so it was…perfect. "

Finn thought about what that would have been like for him and Rachel, had he had ever taken Kurt's advice and applied to New York schools. What surprised him was that the realization did not bring any pain. Maybe it was the pot, or the great company, but he wondered instead if maybe he could make a go of it in New York.

"Maybe I should apply to schools in New York," he said aloud.

"What's stopping you?" Dave asked, leaning forward, elbows on his knees.

"What if she doesn't want me anymore, won't forgive me? "

"Well, you said she was strong, right?" Giulia asked pointedly.

"Yeah, she's the strongest person I know."

"Then she will forgive you. Gandhi said that forgiveness is an attribute of the strong. The weak, he said, can never forgive."

He'd never thought about it that way. For the first time in a long time, Finn felt a breath of hope, even with the realization that he had been weak, in that sense, with Rachel.

"Dave, how did you forgive Giulia, if the both of you don't mind my asking? I mean, I don't know how I could have."

"It's a long, convoluted story, Finn, and I'm pretty fucking high right now, so I'm not sure I can do it justice." He turned to Giulia then, and Finn saw something he hadn't seen in a long time: Giulia took Dave's hand and gave him this look—more a serene smile-of absolute trust, exactly the same look Rachel used to give Finn during their most intimate moments. And again, instead of unnerving him, it helped ease his loneliness. These two people, out in the middle of the Utah desert, of all places, just might be the only ones who could understand his relationship with Rachel. Finn felt like he had just met his and Rachel's soul mates. The magnitude of the coincidence boggled his mind.

"You'll do fine, baby," she said softly, stroking his cheek. "He needs to hear this."

Dave took a swig of beer first, and then paused to compose his thoughts. His eyes shone in the firelight, and Finn could see whatever he was remembering was painful. Then he spoke.

"Giulia left me suddenly, without warning and without even a note. I couldn't get hold of her, and her friends suddenly weren't talking to me." Finn could see he was reluctant to reveal this; Giulia dropped her head. He continued.

"So I kinda went…crazy. I was sort of a minor celebrity after the Nebula award, so I was getting invited to parties. I smoked pot with Harlan Ellison once, if you can dig that. Anyway, I soon acquired a reputation for hard partying, which isn't unusual for writers in general—present company excepted—" Giulia smiled shyly, "But the truly shameful thing was how I treated women. I was going through two or so a month. I was a douche, taking out my grief, through anger, on the innocent. Well, some freelance writer heard about all this, and convinced _Playboy_ that I was worth a profile. You know, the angry young _enfant terrible_ of the science fiction world ."

"Even though his writing has always been gentle, never angry," Giulia interjected pointedly, the pride in her voice unmistakable. Finn smiled.

"He held the interview at a bar, let me have a few drinks, then simply recorded one of my rants. And…" Finn had never seen anyone look more remorseful than Dave did at that moment, "… I told him that I wished Giulia and I had never met."

"Wow…dude," Finn said. Giulia had that faraway look again.

"Yes, exactly. And it went to print that way."

"Did you read the article, Giulia?" She nodded.

"She was convinced that I hated her, and ended up marrying the man who started the whole mess in the first place."

"That's freaking sad."

"He loved me," Giulia said, "And he gave me our son. So it wasn't all bad."

She excused herself to the toilet, and the two men were left to look at the fire. The wind picked up, just as Finn placed another stick of cedar on the fire, and a small cloud of embers swirled into the air, like red fireflies. Dave was silent, seemingly lost in thought. Finn's mind reeled from their story, so equally full of heartbreak as well as love. He wondered how his and Rachel's story would end.

"Okay, Davide," Giulia said, kissing Dave's cheek before sitting down again, "You may continue!" She smiled at Finn. "It's going to get happier, now, I promise."

Dave took another gulp of beer, emptying the can, and Giulia already had another ready for him.

"That article really woke me up. I was appalled at what I said and that it had been printed, but there was nothing I could do but complain." He suddenly looked at Giulia. "The only person I wish I'd never met was that fucking _Playboy_ hack, not you."

"I know," she said gently, "But if you hadn't met him, then you probably would never have met Nell."

"That's true, that's true." Dave smiled again.

"Anyway, I toned things down after that. My writing was going well, and I started running to stay in shape. I met Nell out on the road one Saturday morning in Redondo Beach."

"Was she like Giulia?" Finn blurted out, instantly regretting it. "I- I'm sorry, that was dumb."

Dave laughed easily, waving his hands. "No, no, it's fine." Giulia grinned.

"Nell was taller than me," she said with a wink.

"She _was_ taller—five-eight, and willowy. Hazel eyes, very fair skin, with freckles, and long runner's legs. Incredible auburn hair, straight, down to the middle of her back."

"Yikes," Finn said.

"You got that right, son. Looking at her, though, you'd never guess she was an English teacher at an urban core middle school."

"Was she tough, a ninja or ex-Marine, like Michelle Pieffer in _Dangerous Minds_?" Finn was impressed. Giulia giggled.

"No. She did, however, perfect this steely-eyed look, sort of like the Eye of Sauron in _Lord of the Rings_. Nell would sweep a room with it, and everyone would shut up, sit down, and listen. But here's the thing: the only reason the kids let her do that was because they knew she cared for them. They respected her. Nell was the most compassionate person I've ever known, and the kids knew she was genuine."

Finn glanced over at Giulia, and didn't detect any discomfort or jealousy. This was hard for him to fathom. After all, didn't Nell basically keep Dave away from Giulia all those years after her divorce? Weird.

"Anyway, I fell for her—hard. And when things began to get serious, I made her read that _Playboy_ article, just so she knew I wasn't hiding anything."

"Holy crap! What did she say?"

Dave smiled softly at what was obviously a treasured memory. "She said nobody read _Playboy_ for the articles."

Finn roared with laughter. "That was it? Wow."

"Well, no. A couple of days later, she showed up at my door, magazine in her hand, and told me in no uncertain terms that, if the two of us were to have any future, I had to forgive Giulia."

"What?"

"Nell said she couldn't have a serious relationship with anyone who couldn't forgive someone he loved."

"I don't get it. I thought you didn't love her anymore, after what she did."

Dave nodded. "Yep. Me too. But then she said something that made me love Nell even more than I already did."

Giulia was gazing into the fire now. Contented. She looked at peace, Finn thought.

"We sat on my couch and she held both my hands. 'Denying you love Giulia would destroy parts of you that I love, too, ' she said. "

"Nell got 'us'," Giulia said, lovingly, "Even when Davide and I didn't."

"But she also knew what she wanted. 'This ain't no _ménage a trois_ thing, Welland', she told me." Dave chuckled, and put his arm around Giulia, who nuzzled closer.

"So what did you do?"

"I forgave her, of course."

"But…" Finn just couldn't get his mind around one thing, "…you remained apart for another, what, twenty-eight years?"

"When my marriage ended, I couldn't mess with his happiness with Nell by trying to get together again", Giulia said. "He had two daughters by then, and was in the middle of raising them. So I stayed in Australia, and out of his new life."

"Well, you did eventually tell me why you left, baby," Dave said.

She looked shy. "In a novel, yes."

Dave got up to put some more wood on the fire.

"We always communicated best through our writing," he said. "Giulia guessed (correctly) that I at least read her books, so she wrote _Glaciation, _with specific clues that only I would know, and revealed what happened through the characters."

Giulia jumped in. "I owed him that, at least."

The conversation suddenly started freaking Finn out. He wasn't sure if was just paranoia from the pot, or something else.

"Are you okay, man?" The two of them looked concerned.

Finn ran his hands through his hair. "I just feel very, very, weird right now. That thing you said about communicating best through your writing, it's almost like you two are Rachel and me, only…" His voice dropped to a whisper. "… we did it through singing, especially original songs."

Giulia and Dave sat in their chairs and looked at each other.

"Davide, maybe we shouldn't tell him how we got back together again. It might be too heavy."

Finn shook his head. "No, no, please- I need to hear that too. I'm getting the feeling all of this is important."

They both shrugged. Giulia then looked inquiringly at Dave. "You take it, baby," he said, then produced another joint from his sweatshirt and fired it up.

"Finn, are you familiar with our work at all?"

Finn thought a moment. "I'm sorry, not off the top of my head,."

Let's see… Davide's story, 'A Patter of Ghosts', the one that won the Nebula, is anthologized a lot…'

"It's used in a lot of high school English courses," Dave croaked, holding in the hit. He handed off to Giulia,.

"Wait," Finn muttered, "Is that the one about the giant cloud of alien spacecraft wreckage that hits the Earth like a meteor shower? We read that in twelfth grade."

"That's the one!, "Giulia said brightly.

"You wrote that? It was cool." Finn was excited. Dave nodded while Finn took his hit.

"So you remember the two married radioastronomers that watch the whole thing unfold from the Moon? Frank and Elena?"

"Yeah…"

"Well, Davide based their relationship on ours."

He remembered now. The two characters had been together since they were sixteen, and volunteered for the more remote Far Side stations because they were better able to handle the isolation.

"They appeared in several of his novels and stories, and were pretty popular with the fans. After our breakup, he didn't write about them again. But recently his publisher was reprinting them in one volume, and wanted a new Frank and Elena short story to make it special."

"And more lucrative," Dave pointed out. She laughed.

"So he wrote the story, and published it on his website first so the fans could download it for free."

"My agent was _not_ happy."

"The story filled in the details of an event mentioned in 'A Patter of Ghosts', where Elena thinks back to high school when Frank first told her he loved her. What nobody knows is, the details actually happened."

Finn thought back to the story. His eyes grew wide.

"Dave—you actually told Giulia you loved her outside, during a freaking meteor shower? When you were sixteen? "

Dave gave an exaggerated shrug. "Wouldn't you?"

"Dude, that's awesome!"

"I read the story, because I've read everything he ever wrote," Giulia continued, "and he captured every detail, every feeling from that night perfectly, lovingly." She stopped, her voice breaking, then tearily, "And I realized he didn't hate me."

She stopped for a few moments, and Dave gently wiped her tears away.

"Go on, baby" he said, "You have to finish the tale for him."

She pulled herself together. "Believe it or not, Frank and Elena have quite a bit of fanfiction written about them."

"It's not surprising," Dave interjected, 'Even Gomer Pyle has fanfiction."

"Davide reads all of them, and even posts reviews."

"There's some _really_ good smut-" Giulia gave him an exasperated look. He put up his hands.

"So I decided to reach out. I created a fan fiction account, and wrote one of my own, where Frank and Elena go on a road trip from LA to New York for graduate school. Along the way, they camp right here, and talk under the stars. Of course, Davide and I had come here years before, and had the same conversation! I recreated the conversation as best I could remember…then posted it. And waited."

"I knew it was her the minute I started reading it—just from the polished, elegant style," Dave said proudly. "She is the best writer I have ever known." Giulia looked down, pleased. "So I sent her a private message, and she answered…and then she asked me if I would visit her in Australia."

"And he did," Giulia said happily, "He came almost half-way across the world to see me when I asked him."

Finn shook his head in wonder. "You guys got a happy ending after all."

Giulia smiled, but Dave looked more pensive.

"I got two happy endings, actually," he said. "Nell made sure of that. Considering that many people never even get one, I often wonder what I did to deserve it."

Giulia surprised Finn by snorting and standing up.

"It's not what you did, Davide," she said, walking over and kneeling beside Finn's chair, "It's what you are." She took Finn's left hand in both of hers. "Finn, I know you regret what happened with you and Rachel, so, if I can give you any advice on building what you had again, it's this: be like him." She pointed at Dave, her lower lip trembling. "Be like him, and forgive, even ambition as intense as mine and Rachel's. Be loyal. Be selfless. Be decent. And then spend the rest of your life trying to be worthy of her, even if she doesn't think she deserves it. Because she does. Lord help me, I know he does." She kissed him on the cheek then, and stood up. "Man, I need a beer."

They spent the rest of the night talking as the embers in the fire died down. Finn learned that Giulia's first novel was a best seller and had been made into an Oscar-winning film. He loved the fact that he and Rachel had actually seen it together; it was one of her dads' favorites. "Better than _The English Patient,_" Rachel had said. Dave and Giulia were writing a book together, finishing Frank and Elena's road trip, and traveling the route as they did so. It would be called _Ripe As Peaches, "_You know, after the Kerouac quote about karma," Giulia said, and he didn't know what that meant, but it sounded awesome, especially when she added, "We're dedicating it to Nell." Finally, late, they watched meteors spark across the incredible, powdered-sugar-dusted dark of the sky, and finished off Finn's Doritos stash.

He dreamed about Rachel again. She was still at the picnic table, smiling this time, like she did on the school stairs after kissing him, so long ago.

In the morning he had coffee with Dave and Giulia, and they took him down to the Green River overlook, the scene from the brochure, and his heart leaped into his throat. They stood on the edge of a sheer thousand-foot drop, straight down to a shelf of canyons ringing the meandering river, still another thousand feet down, all below a vast horizon of silent, watchful, buttes and mesas. No sound but the wind and the beating of his heart.

He looked over at the two of them, arms around each other's waist, lost in the face of such stark, large-scale beauty, and he wanted what they had. He wanted to grow old with Rachel. He wanted to be worthy of her again. And something about this place-maybe the healing spirits that haunted these mesas, or the two rejoined souls standing next to him, or maybe even Nell- told Finn that Rachel had been right all along. He just needed the courage to become what her love deemed obvious. He hoped he was not too late.

He packed his truck later that morning. Dave and Giulia were staying another night to get some writing ("arguing, mostly", Dave quipped) and stargazing done. Giulia gave him a warm hug. "You know what you have to be, right? And Lima ain't where it's at, right?"

"Yeah, I know."

Dave clapped him on the back, shook his hand, and handed him a small package and a slip of paper. "That's our address and cell phone numbers. We've got yours. We should be in New York eventually. You'd better be there with Rachel and a floor for us to crash on when we arrive."

"You bet!" Finn opened the package. It was a CD, "Beat the Retreat: the songs of Richard Thompson."

"It's a great tribute album to one of our favorite songwriters. Get some tips by listening to it. And Giulia says, listen very carefully to the title track."

"It was wonderful to meet you guys," Finn said, hugging both of them. "Thanks for everything."

They stood waving as he drove back down the gravel road.

XXXXXXXX

As he drove through Dayton, Ohio on I-70, Finn smiled, sweeping past the old, familiar I-75 north exit that led to Lima, to his old life. His mother and Burt knew what his plans were now. On the phone she cried, but understood; Burt simply told him good luck. Then he called Kurt. To be honest, he didn't know how his stepbrother would react.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" he asked.

"No, Kurt, I don't. Frankly, I'm scared shitless because, if I can't even succeed at cleaning pools, how the hell am I gonna succeed at something like music?"

A chuckle from the other end. "You'll just have to come out and try, won't you, brother? "

"I guess so. And thanks for letting me stay in yours and Rachel's place. I know I asked you to keep it secret from her, and if she throws me out I'll just make do. The only thing I won't do is leave again."

"Oh, how I've missed your crazy. But to be honest, I don't think living here will be a problem. Let's just say my spidey-sense is getting a good vibe."

Kurt went on to tell Finn what Starbucks Rachel haunted, and to be there around 9AM on the Monday. "She has had trouble sleeping since we've been here. Starbucks is practically her home-away-from-home". Finn could relate to that.

Somewhere in the dark, working his way through Pennsylvania, he started listening to the CD, and played the title track. It was sung by a woman named June Tabor, with a dark, but chillingly clear, English voice:

_I'm beating my retreat  
Back home to you  
I'm beating my retreat  
Back home to you  
I'm burning all my bridges  
I'm burning all my bridges  
I'm burning all my bridges  
I'm running back home to you_

_I'm trailing my colours_  
_Back home to you_  
_I'm trailing my colours_  
_Back home to you_  
_This world is filled with sadness_  
_This world is filled with sadness_  
_This world is filled with sadness_  
_I'm running back home to you_

He mentally thanked Giulia; the song was perfect. But then:

_I'll follow the drum_  
_Back home to you_  
_I'll follow the drum_  
_Back home to you_  
_There was no sense in my leaving_  
_There was no sense in my leaving_  
_There was no sense in my leaving_  
_I'm running back home to you_

And, for the first time in a very long time, Finn Hudson wept without shame.

XXXXXXX

The Starbucks was crowded; it was Manhattan, after all. The late-September weather was cool and dry. At first he thought he was too late, as he used his height to scan the place, but couldn't locate her. The whir of the grinders, the wheezing of the espresso machines, and the buzz of conversations in different languages made him wonder how anyone could get any studying done. Maybe she had come to the same conclusion and left. He strained to look at the far corner.

And there she was: sitting alone, back to him, at a tiny table arrayed with books, a laptop and a huge coffee cup. She was thinner than he remembered, her hair shorter, shoulder-length, similar to Giulia's. More fashionable: purple silk shirt, skinny jeans and black suede boots. But she looked tired and worn, hunched over the laptop in concentration. Her spark seemed dimmed. His heart broke.

He debated internally what to do next. Tap her on the shoulder? Say her name? Lord, how he wished everything were back as it was, when they were comfortable enough with each other to say anything. But it wasn't like that anymore. Finn wondered how Giulia and Dave handled the moment they saw each other again. In the end, he simply walked up and slipped into the opposite chair.

She glanced up in momentary annoyance. Her mouth opened slightly, as if she were going to say something, but recognition set in right then and her countenance froze, waiting for her brain to process what just happened. Finn looked at her calmly, almost afraid to smile or speak, as if he hadn't yet earned even those rights with her. Then a softening: ever so slight, her tired eyes backing off their initial, angry flash. He held his breath.

Those eyes took him in for several heartbeats, absorbing his longer hair and actual tan, the deep sadness and regret, the bone-tired aching for redemption. She held all of him within her gaze: his love for her, being, not doing, a life together; their karma, full, luscious, ripe as peaches; peace, and a decent night's sleep.

And then this: the slow, enigmatic half-smile of a long-ago staircase.


End file.
